Sons of Ares and Daughters of Demeter
by Tgfmcom
Summary: Children of Ares are known for being bloodthirsty and for picking fights, but not for being nice to pretty Demeter girls who are feeling sad.


**I always saw people shipping Connor and Miranda (maybe 'cause Tratie is kind of a "popular" ship) and I know many people shipped her with Lou Ellen, but then TOA happened.**

 **I never payed much attention to her, but after reading THO and CHB Confidential I wonder which kind of relationship they must have. They seem very opposite to me.**

 **Don't really know much about them but I tried. Hope they are not too OOC. And if anybody reading this happens to like Cecil, I swear I have nothing against him. He's just a victim of a crazy fanfic writer who doesn't want to create an OC.**

 **Everything belongs to Rick Riordan.**

* * *

When he left his cabin that morning, Sherman did not expect to find Miranda Gardiner crying alone in the woods. Let alone have a strange kind of 'heart-to-heart' with the Demeter girl.

He and Ellis, his half-brother, had decided to go after some monsters to slaughter. Since the war against Gaea was over and the Greco-Roman conflict was solved, life at camp became somewhat tedious. At least for the children of Ares.

At some point along the way, Sherman had lost Ellis and assumed that if he went back, he could maybe find him.

On his way back – at least he hoped that was the same way –, his eyes caught a figure in the middle of the bushes.

His instincts took over his body almost automatically. In his fighting position, ready to attack, he approached the figure as stealthy as he could be (a Hermes' blessing could be quite useful sometimes) trying not to make a sound. He almost let his sword fall when he realized the figure was from somebody familiar.

He recognized the girl, Miranda Gardiner, the head counselor of Cabin 4. From what his memory could gather, she was for sure not her cabin's best fighter, but was always determinate to improve her fighting skills.

she always seemed eager to learn new things and

Miranda had her head resting on her knees, and while Sherman couldn't see her face, he knew she wasn't in a good mood; besides the fact that she was sobbing uncontrollably, a variety of withered flowers surrounded her and Sherman could almost see the grass around Miranda slightly losing its green color.

Normally children of Demeter didn't appreciate a vision like that. They were always so passionate about forests, wildlife, global warming and all those kind of stuff. He and his siblings (and pretty much all the other cabins) enjoyed mocking them, especially their head-counselor who was the one responsible of voicing their opinions on how the camp was dealing with their waste and other uninteresting things.

But Miranda didn't seem to mind the flowers or the grass.

Sherman frowned.

You know, as a son of Ares he never cared about the Demeter Cabin. Ever since he first set foot on camp, he was taught to think that Demeter children were more or less like a second Aphrodite cabin. The disastrous sparring classes his cabin had had with them didn't help much to prove otherwise.

He remembered once when Clarisse had lost her temper – as usual – and yelled at one of Miranda's youngest siblings. Suddenly their class had turned into a screaming match between Clarisse and Katie.

But the girl was sure acting weird and it somehow had sparked his interest.

"Miranda?" He sat down in front of her to her.

She looked up, her green eyes a little swollen from crying. "Sherman?"

"What happened? Why are you crying?" he tried to ask in the nicest tone he had, the same tone he used to speak to his mother.

"Why do you care?"

Oh yeah. He had forgotten he was acting completely out of character.

He must have looked surprised because Miranda shook her head and said, "It's nothing, really. It doesn't matter."

"Well, it does matter if it upset you to the point of killing off your flowers."

Miranda sighed and said, "Cecil Markowitz pulled a prank on me."

"Oh." There wasn't really much Sherman could say. Hermes' kids pulled all sorts of pranks all the time, and the campers of the Demeter cabin were their favorite target since the chocolate Easter bunnies. Although, when Miranda had to step up as the head-counselor, the jokes weren't that funny anymore and the Hermes cabin started to go easy on them. Miranda had a lot more patience Katie could only dream of, so her reactions didn't amuse the Hermes campers as much as Katie's.

Most campers had learned to never take the pranks too seriously. Sure, at the moment they would blast out in anger, but the next day everybody would just move on with their lives. That didn't mean they didn't hold grudges, though.

But Sherman could feel there was something else bothering her.

"It wasn't just a prank, was it?" he asked and Miranda nodded her head. She bit her lips trying to hold back the tears.

Whatever Cecil had done this time, Sherman was going to punch him for making that girl cry. He didn't know Miranda very well, but he knew enough to know that this wasn't her normal self. She was always so full of life and cheering. To see her like that – she appeared so fragile, about to break at any moment… No, that wasn't Miranda.

"Billie's sick so I decided to give her a bouquet. Some nymphs helped me choose and make a beautiful flower arrangement with some get well flowers and blue delphiniums, her favorite flower. But as I was heading back to my cabin, Cecil appeared out of gods know where and then–" She sobbed.

Man, he was definitely going to make Cecil pay for this.

"Look, if you don't want to tell me what he did, that's okay." He gave her a light pat on the back.

What in Hades was that? He was being nice? He wasn't nice.

"I obviously cussed him, and I think he got pissed when I said something about his cabin's stupid shenanigans. He said that… He said that Demeter's children are a bunch of crazy plant weirdos whose best ability is to annoy the Hades out of everybody with our environmental bullshit and that we should just stick to making flowers for graveyards.

"He said other stuff too, but I don't wanna repeat that. I think I was harsh on him."

Nevermind what he had mentally said he was going to do with Cecil before. He was going to _kill_ that guy.

"Well, he had it coming," he said.

"No, I shouldn't have said anything about his cabin. I deserved everything he said."

Once again, Sherman couldn't find the words to comfort her. He was a son of Ares and not Aphrodite. He didn't know how to deal with other people's feelings.

"I shouldn't be crying," she said while standing up. "If Katie was here she'd tell me to be strong. Katie wouldn't be whining about it."

"But you're not Katie," he said.

Sherman knew how it felt to be compared to your cabin's previous head counselor. You were expected to be just like them, if not better. Clarisse was an excellent leader, she ran a tight ship.

Miranda picked the flowers and gathered them in the gloomiest bouquet he had ever seen. "Anyways, thank you for listening to me, Sherman. That was really sweet of you."

He could feel his cheeks burning. "Y-you're welcome, I guess."

"See ya around."

He sat there and watched as she disappeared between the trees.

"Hey, man. I finally found ya," Ellis said coming out of the bush behind Sherman. "What are you doing sitting there? Waiting for a monster to kill you?"

"Hey Ellis, man, watcha think about giving Cecil a little gift? Courtesy of the Ares cabin."

* * *

"Miranda, you have _got_ to see this," was all Billie said as she grabbed Miranda by her arm and dragged her out of the Arena.

Since she was a year-rounder, Miranda took some of her free time to train. Although she had survived two wars, she still felt as if she wasn't doing enough. Sure, her powers were amazing (at least she thought they were) and her fighting skills were decent enough, but they could be better. What if she was in a situation where she couldn't rely on her powers and had to rely on her physical strength?

"Billie, you're sick. What are you doing out of bed?" But Billie didn't answer. Instead, she kept walking while dragging Miranda with her.

She took Miranda to the front of Cabin 11 where a crowd of campers were gathered around. Miranda noticed Chiron standing beside Connor Stoll, who tried – without any success – to take Cecil out of the roof of the cabin.

Yes. Cecil Markowitz. Hanging from the rooftop of his own cabin.

Miranda noticed three Ares boys (one of them being Sherman Yang himself) laughing hysterically while Cecil cursed and yelled at Connor to get him out of there quickly.

Now, let's ratiocinate with Miranda: The previous day Sherman had found her and she had told him about Cecil their little argument, if you could call that an argument.

The next day Cecil was given a hanging wedgie by someone. Classic school bully thing from movies? Yeps.

It was true that Hermes' children liked to prank everybody, including each other. But that occasion did not look like a typical Hermes camper prank. It was made by a much tougher demigod. Or demigods.

Miranda was no daughter of Athena, but she was able to connect the dots. And Cecil yelling threats at the Ares cabin made it even more obvious.

Miranda approached the Ares boys and asked, "You're the responsible for this, aren't you Sherman?"

The three boys stopped laughing. Noticing Sherman's uneasy smile, the two other Ares boys smirked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sherman said.

"I just find it funny that yesterday we had that conversation and today Cecil's… Well… You know exactly what you did."

The other two boys looked back and forth between them.

"So you punished him for me?" Miranda asked teasingly while not believing it at the same time. He was a jerk. Period. Everybody at camp knew that. But he could be a sensitive and genuinely nice person when he wanted to.

She noticed his face turned a darker shade of red.

"I–Uh–Well–You see–"

"So that's why you chose Cecil, huh?" one of the boys – Ellis, maybe – said. He grinned. "Did little Cecil mess with your girlfriend, Sherman?"

Miranda felt her cheeks getting warmer with the comment.

"Shut up, Mark!" Sherman said.

"Look, it was really sweet of you to avenge me and everything, but I would really appreciate it if you'd help Cecil."

"I didn't do it for you! I did it 'cause Cecil was getting on my nerves." And quickly after saying that, Sherman stomped to where Cecil was hanging.

Connor backed off when he saw Sherman approaching and even Cecil stopped his yelling.

"Hey, Stoll, help me take this punk down from the roof," he said.

Miranda grinned while the other campers – including Chiron – blinked in confusion at Sherman's attitude.

* * *

 **I know some people ship Cecil and Ellis (I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up as a couple) so Ellis agreeing with Sherman's "punishment" would be… yeah. But this story takes place before CHB Confidential, and I think they weren't that close until a little before the whole THD story happen (just read The Ares Peacetime Challenge and take your own conclusions). Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna hide under my bed after this.**


End file.
